MOSCOW!!!!!!!

                                                                   22ND MAY

Hello all- well the awfully exciting news is that Molly, Grettle and I have made it to Moscow!!
The less exciting news is that we are not seeing a great deal of it due to being based a good half hour from the center. We are staying in a dead cheap, dead grotty hotel near Sheremetyevo airport where I need to be tomorrow to get Molly's EU health certificate.

With any luck, we will be sorted by tomorrow afternoon and on route to Latvia at last!

A few pics on route to Moscow....

Molly and I are both feeling a great deal better after the horrid injections and some antibiotics. Molly is back on grub and very much enjoying the chicken she receives every time we stop at a roadside café, so much so in fact, that she doesn’t notice when I slip in her medicine!
Grettle remains on fantastic form which is splendid and has now made it 6000 km in 3 weeks despite absolutely terrible weather, so molly and I are both very proud of her.
I think I can speak for all three of us when I say that excitement in brewing for getting out of Russia and into Latvia and the EU. Grettle can slow down and take it easy, Molly can have longer walks and I will have a bit more time to sit and sketch. 
During my sprint through Siberia, I feel like I have been living for the first, and hopefully last time, in the world of truck drivers and motels; it couldn’t be more different to my route out to Mongolia on the Silk Road; hostels, travelers, hot weather and off road mountain madness! I haven’t had a single English conversation since leaving UB and haven’t met a single traveler- I have spent some fun nights with the mayonnaise men, the salt spreading men, and various other truck drivers but in general, I am ready to leave Russia and tackle the next Chapter…bring on the EU!

Molly almost got got by a snake the other day and had rather a shock. This happened shortly after the blood-sucking spider saga and so perhaps not surprisingly, I got a little worried that she might have been bitten and I would have to get her to another vet before ‘dog be dead’ again!  Thankfully I checked all over and saw no snake bite, so I decided I was now being paranoid and that if Molly had been got, she would have made much more of a fuss!
We had our first fall a few days ago- it was in a city whilst crossing rail way tracks and really left me with the shakes. Luckily we were going very slowly and all came out of It in one piece. Grettle slid on one of the metal tracks and down we all went! Thankfully molly’s leash that attaches her to the bag broke during the crash and so she could jump free from the bike. I think it rather woke her up- i'm pretty sure she was dozing in her bag when we all tumbled over and when I got up, I saw her standing by the side of the rail tracks looking rather perplexed, still in her travel coat and broken harness but interestingly, wagging her tail and appeared most over excited! I think perhaps she is rather like me, and gets a buzz from the adrenaline!?

Well- enough for now will send word from Latvia!